Jon Stewart finishes off Jim Cramer. America cackles.

For a week, comedian Jon Stewart has been ridiculing financial network

CNBC for it’s ineptitude in reporting in the months preceding the 2008

economic meltdown.

Sparked by Rick Santelli’s on-air tirade — where

he called distressed homeowners “losers” but didn’t refer to the

bungling CEOs and hedge fund managers who did even worse — Stewart

used video to show how the network kissed rich guy butt for months.

Cramer

took offense. Stewart narrowed in on Cramer the next night, showing the

“Mad Money” host calling Bear Stearns a healthy company and worth buying in

the weeks before the company collapsed. Cramer went public with his

whining and Stewart made fun of that, too.

On Thursday, Cramer showed up to eat crow and accept his beating face-to-face.

And Stewart delivered, devoting most of his show to a fact-based, good-natured destruction of CNBC and Cramer’s shtick. It was as complete and thorough of a rhetorical ass-kicking as ever unfolded in court.